John Witt understands that the work he and his crews do on a daily basis is not what normal people would ever consider doing - but then again the work they do is vital to the safety of people across the country.

"Someone said it best when they said we are the unsung heroes of the construction business, "Witt said.

Witt, 34, is originally from Kent City but now spends nearly all of his time on the road moving from job to job across the country with the Janod company, of Champlain, N.Y. He supervises trained crews to stabilize rock faces, ledges, and other wayward stones to keep them from falling on to roadways where the massive boulders could crush vehicles and kill motorists.

He is also one of the stars of the new National Geographic Channel's reality show "Rock Stars."

The show is similar to "Deadliest Catch" or "Ice Road Truckers" in that the film crew tries to catch the workers doing what they do without interfering then spliced with interviews of the workers telling what they have just done or describing in detail what is about to happen.

The television show premiered the last week of November. "They shot us for 32 days this summer while we were working on U.S. 12 south on Mt. Rainer National Park," Witt said. "We had crew members hanging off from the rock several hundred feet in the air working to stabilize the slope and they had 20 cameramen hanging from the rocks and a remote-controlled helicopter flying around us every day filming the operation," Witt said. "It was crazy. We are used to working at a site by ourselves, but it was fun."

Executive producer Justin Ward, 41, first thought of the idea for the show while looking at a stabilized slope in Hawaii, where he lives. He said the filming of the show was the craziest thing he had ever been involved in. Ward is best know in the television industry for producing extreme sports and mixed martial arts.

He had to have his cameramen certified as climbers before they could start shooting "Rock Stars" for safety purposes and because at any time, any one of them may be needed to go over the edge of a cliff just to get a shot. "None of the cameramen had ever worked in these conditions, which brought a certain electricity to the set every day," Ward said in a phone interview.

He also wanted to use a helicopter to get shots that his cameramen couldn't get, but a regular helicopter couldn't get close enough to the work site without putting the workers at risk.

Instead of a full-size helicopter, he brought in a remote controlled helicopter the size of a man’s body that could hover within a few feet of workers' heads and not disrupt the work site. The remote-controlled camera on board produced amazing shots, he said. "I think we are the first show of this kind to use a helicopter to get those types of shots," Ward said.

They also used disposable video cameras on remote-controlled cars to run into landslides and rolling rocks to get action shots never seen before on television. The cameras were equipped with microphones so that they could record sound right up to the moment of the device being smashed, Ward said.

Ward said he was impressed with Witt and his crew. "John Witt was the coolest guy on the planet," Ward said. "We’re shooting all around him and his crew and they just did their job."

Witt said that it wasn’t always easy because while he had to keep his own crew on task, he also had to keep Ward up to speed on what was going on.

John Witt (center with white helmet) Photo supplied

"Being the superintendent of a large job is hard enough," Witt said. "Every day you are trying to make sure the crew has all of the equipment they need and are where they need to be to get the job done. Working around a television crew made things even more of a challenge." Ward said that the show takes what appears to be a very dangerous and technical job, and explains how the job gets done in spite of the all of the inherent obstacles. "It's a lot like shooting extreme sports," he said. "You have to show and then describe to the audience what is happening."

Ward said that he had passed a lava mountain in Hawaii that a crew from Janod had recently stabilized and started wondering how the work actually got done. "I was looking at this stuff 200 and 300 feet up the mountainside and wondered what kind of person does that kind of work and how do they do it," Ward said. He called the owner of the Janod company and begged to film one of the crews that was working in Hawaii.

The crew he filmed was being led by Witt.

Ward partnered with Echo Entertainment, of Los Angles, who was able to put together a pilot for a reality show from the Hawaii footage. The National Geographic Channel bought the show and 10 episodes this year. The show could get picked up for a second season, which will involve Witt and his crew in more episodes.

Witt is the superintendent of the six episodes that were shot in Washington state. The other four episodes were shot at Niagara Falls and Witt does not appear in those shows.

With the show just being launched, Ward said he does not know if there will be a second season. "This is my first television show, so I hope they pick it up for a second season, but they haven’t said anything yet," he said. Witt studied residential construction while in high school and after graduating from Kent City in 1995, quickly got a job building houses and then agricultural barns.

In 2000, he moved to Punta Gorda, Fla., and went to work for one of the largest bridge builders in the South, working on the new mile-long Peace River Bridge. "I wasn’t there long before they put me in charge of a crew," Witt said. After the new bridge was completed, the company needed to take down the old bridge, which had stood since the 1930s. “The company sent me to dive school and I become a certified underwater demolitions diver and helped to remove the old bridge,” Witt said.

He returned to Kent City in 2004. “There was work in Florida, but it didn’t pay well,” he said. After not having much luck finding a good job in Michigan, his cousin called from New York, saying that the company that he worked for had openings and they paid really well. “Their motto is that ‘The weak of heart need not apply’ and I knew once I saw what they were doing, I could do the work,” Witt said.

He was married and had children, but the chance to make big money and take care of his family outweighed the time he knew that he would be away from family.

Witt quickly moved up to be a superintendent with the company. “I had my first back surgery when I was 27 years old, so I knew I couldn’t do the really hard work for too long, so I learned everything I could as fast as I could,” he said. He has been with Janod for nearly seven years.

Still Witt is often on high slopes and mountain faces regularly and working in conditions that few would call “normal.” Crews drill into the rock and put 100-foot-long bolts into the rock to keep it in place. They build mesh nets to catch rocks should they fall, build steel retaining walls hundreds of feet above the ground, all the while suspended by ropes and dodging rocks and other debris that is constantly falling around them. “For the show we rolled a two-ton boulder 20 feet down a slope and on to a car to show what would happen and the car was completely crushed,” Witt said.

He said that was why the work they do is so important and so unnoticed. If they do their job right, motorists never see the rock slides that could have occurred.

For the “Rock Stars” episodes, his crew spent several months working near White Pass on U.S. Highway 12 in Washington, south of Mr. Rainer National Park, stabilizing existing slopes along the highway. “The view from the job was spectacular,” he said. Witt has also worked in New York City, helping to stabilize tunnels for the New York Subway system. “The traffic is so hard to get used to, especially when you have grown up in Kent City,” he said. Witt has had several close calls over the years and said that a couple of times he isn’t sure how he survived, but has never really been injured too badly on the job.

Right now he is taking a few months off in Kent City to deal with family issues and then expects to go back to work sometime next spring “wherever they send me,” he said.